By Lars Lindahl Visit my new web site: http://www.angelfire.com/ny3/larsattacks © 2000 Lars Lindahl
Directed by Scott Sanders Written by Scott Sanders
Starring Alec Baldwin, Michael Jai White, Andre Braugher, Rebecca De Mornay, Bruce Greenwood, Julia Sweeney, and Janeane Garafolo.
Grade: ** (out of four)
A sometimes entertaining, mostly confused film, "Thick as Thieves" never made it in the theaters outside of Sundance. It may have done well at the box office, but maybe after similar films bombed, such as "Clay Pigeons" or "Goodbye Lover," executives decided to send it straight to cable. Oh well.
Despite its talented cast and interesting premise, the movie lacks a big scene or a memorable climax to help bring everything together at the end. The film introduces plenty of promising characters but never develops them or the scenarios they are involved in. It is very hard to determine if "Thick as Thieves" is an attempted satire of an Elmore Leonard crime novel or a cheap imitation of one. Either way, it fails at what it tries to become, a clever black comedy. There is not one character the viewer can relate to, mainly because we only receive glimpses of who these individuals really are or because
they are so cliched and predictable that they are uninteresting. The only good guy in the film who comes close to an "average Joe" is a cop who spends the whole film investigating the bad guys. There are no scenes of the cop's personal life outside of her job so we never learn anything about the character. Rebecca De Mornay plays her terribly flat with absolutely no emotions and she looks so much like Hillary Clinton that at times it is very distracting. Sometimes films succeed without any normal characters (see "Pulp Fiction") because the situations they are in are so outrageous and irregular that they are enjoyable. "Thick as Thieves" is not enjoyable because nothing happens. No interesting twists, no funny jokes, no decent subplots, and especially no originality. Nothing.
The straight forward plot is a fight between a car stealing gang, led by Michael Jai White, and an infamous thief (Alec Baldwin), known as the thief. The thief is angry at the gang because they tried to set him up and get him killed over twenty thousand dollars worth of food stamps. The rest of the movie has the two sides playing tricks on each other in order to entertain themselves. The plot was interesting because it started out very unusual. The fact that they are fighting over food stamps is funny because it is pathetic. However, as the film dragged on and the same food stamp joke remained, the funniness eventually died off. The pathetic aspect though never disappeared. >From the opening point, writer-director Sanders should have elaborated into new grounds. He should have thrown in interesting secrets about the characters or maybe another reason for the two sides to fight each other. In other words, he should have made a different movie after the first twenty minutes.
Alec Baldwin and Michael Jai White are supposed to be wild unique bad guys. This notion is somewhat examined at times when we see Baldwin's obsession with his dog or with music records and White's obsession with French food. However, there is certainly not enough of this humorous eccentricity in the film. Sanders also had a very talented cast of supporting actors to fill the roles but they were not used to their full potential. Jeneane Garafolo had a blink and you missed her appearance. Andre Braugher, so effective and memorable on the television show "Homicide: Life on the Streets" is supposed to be an Iago character to White's leadership, but it is terribly confusing as to what side he is on and what he believes in especially at the end of the film.
"Thick as Thieves" is an unsuccessful attempt at repeating the comedic cleverness of crime stories such as "Get Shorty" or "Out of Sight." As a feature debut for Sanders, it was a respectable first try.
Grade: ** (out of four)
By Lars Lindahl Visit my new web site: http://www.angelfire.com/ny3/larsattacks
© 2000 Lars Lindahl
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